>> the question is, her husband, for six years, has been working on being a writer and wants to write this book. what advice would i give him, have you start him, have you started what but then how do you get to the end. writing a book is like building a sand castle a grain of sand at a time. you write chapter one. you have a blank page. one grain of sand. then you come in and you add three more pages. it's nothing. it's just two grains of sand next to each other. then you come back on wednesday and you have another grain of sand. the thing is, if you write a page a day, everyday, you will have a book. after a year, you will have the book. it may not be a good one, but you will have one. most people say, oh, it's monday, i will write three pages

on wednesday. they don't want to do so everyday. if i give you advice for how to finish it, i say write everyday. my first book, i would come home and write from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. every night. i would write all day saturday and sunday, and that's all i did. i really wanted to finish. i love these imaginary people i was talking to. whatever to your husband, and this is to anyone who is writing or doing anything when they choose their dream, i got 24 rejection letters on my first book. it still sits on my shelf published by kinko's. i got 24 rejection letters. there were only 20 publishers at the time. that means some people were writing me twice to make sure i got the point. [laughter] [laughter] but i said it went like this book, i will write another. what i would tell your husband and any writer out there, since it is -- i don't want to look

back on the express and say they were right and i was wrong, i look back and say life is objective. it takes one person to publish your book. that's the only difference. it doesn't mean i was right and they were wrong, it just means that i found someone to take a chance on my book. whatever your dream is in your life from the only way you find it is to chase it. whatever it is you do with your life, whether you run a restaurant or you are a teacher or a stay-at-home parent, don't let anyone tell you know, ever. never ever. that is a lesson for writing or anything else. i think that is it always. with that said, i do want to thank national library week. i want to thank every library and then teacher. we always get them at book signings. i know one librarian and one teacher is here for sure. thank you for what you do and giving books to all of us. [applause] [applause] [applause]

[applause] my tenure will just give me the thumbs up, my four year old is still quiet. i'm going to take it as a sign from god. i want to thank you all for coming, i greatly appreciate it. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> one more big round of applause for brad meltzer. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> if you would like one of brad's books, you can purchase one. you can help put brats kids through school. we will all welcome brad as he takes off on his book to her and i hope this propels onto the books best-seller list. thank you, c-span. >> one more thing i forgot, my daughter said this shirt i am wearing, when i was shopping for

clothes for my daughter, i was writing this book. i would see all the things she was wearing, and it was princesses. i kept thinking, i have better heroes than that. i designed a shirt for her. i designed a little amelia earhart cartoon character. on the back i wrote, i know no bounds. so we brought it to amelia earhart's estate. they loved it. mohammad ali's estate, they loved it. so we launched a coordinated clothing line called ordinary people change the world. if you could ordinary people change the world.com, you will see my true motto in life. i don't care where you went to school, i believe in ordinary people and the ability they have to change the world. if i can give and let her pull where these heroes, that's great. 10% of the proceeds go to a church of your choice.

we are working with city of miami. i feel terrible that i forgot to mention them earlier, also, a breast cancer charity and make a wish foundation. u-boat on where the proceeds go. i appreciate you helping out these organizations. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's website, brad meltzer.com. >> from politics & prose bookstore, the new book, "yours in truth" by transport. this is about 40 minutes and it contains language some may find offensive. >> good evening, i am bradley graham. i am co-owner of politics & prose bookstore. on behalf of everybody here at the store, i would like to

welcome you. those of you who attend our events know, we try to have an author come as soon as possible after his or her book is released. most of the time, the authors will have appeared in one or two other places reaching politics & prose bookstore, or will have given interviews to news organizations. but tonight, we actually have a world exclusive. this is the first time that jeff himmelman is speaking publicly about his new biography, of ben bradlee, the book, "yours in truth", it has already generated some heated controversy. the controversy flared last week when a portion of the book was exited in new york magazine, and the fallout of that has much to do with another great "washington post" legend, bob

bradlee. i believe it to jeff to address the substance of the dispute. by way of introduction, let me just say that the biography is nearly 500 pages long and contains considerably more than the news stories have covered. i found the book quite engaging, and it certainly captures the much celebrated ben bradlee and all his energy, player, kurdish profanity charisma and impact. jeff had remarkable access to bradlee's personal papers and to bradlee himself. jeff came to this project as a friend of the bradlee family, and also as a friend and collaborator of woodward, who is just journalistic mentor. jeff takes up the first 30 or so

pages of the book with a lengthy description of how the project evolved. that is how it was envisioned as a book to be written with bradley, became instead a book by jeff about bradlee. jeff notes that early on, he began to sense the trickiness of writing about your mentors mentor. this book is subtitled a personal portrait of ben bradlee. the book becomes as much about jeff's own discovery and journey as it is an account of bradlee flight. jet planes to speak for 20 minutes or so and then we'll take questions. if you'd like to ask a question, step up to the microphone in the center of the room. afterwards, jeff will remain sign copies of his book. if you haven't already. senator cell phones and join me

in welcoming transport.. jeff himmelman. >> thank you so much. i have a couple of disclaimers, but i just had a conversation with the folks at c-span. what i was going to say is that i was prevented from using blue language. and it is very difficult to read for my book or talk about ben bradlee without using cuss words. i am very happy to give you been in full color. for those of you who have read as was said, those of you who grew -- red book in the post, this book is about then, and i think about it being a 500 page book and a person of interest, it is true.

my hope is that you will find him is captivating as i did and enjoyed reading about him. i started working with ben bradlee. before that happened, as i was working with him, the first thing he did was give me access to his archives. it wasn't the whole thing at first, it was just a set of boxes with a bunch of letters. the way that i got to know ben, he was sitting in his office when i was petrified of going in to talk to him. the way i got to know him was through his letters. i thought i would read if you that i loved the first in a sense of how i got to know him. the first letter that appears in book is one of my favorites. it's from 1977. a man had written to captain graham, who is the publisher of the post. he mentioned that her father and her former husband must be turning over their graves because of the way you are dragging down what used to be a

wonderful newspaper. in my humble opinion, i think the persons responsible for the "washington post"'s decline are benjamin bradlee and [inaudible name]. i hope today is not far off when you fired those two pecker woods. dear sir, the secretary interrupted the man during his drinks in the yard repeatedly. they answered him and told him to go [bleep] himself. [applause] [applause] another of my very favorite letters that i came across early, if he appeared on a panel. the editor and panel were working together, and the letter

says you revealed your arrogance to the press. after another paragraph of going after ben, he signed the letter cordially and sincerely and services ben's response. editors do run the risk of appearing arrogant if they choose to disagree. you sound like one of those publishers who aim to please his pals in the community and give them what they want. no one will call you arrogant that way. no one will call you a newspaperman either. [laughter] [laughter] i am so happy i can curse, by the way. this opens up all kinds of possibility. this is one of my wife loved. this is a letter to an old gentleman named frank who was a journalistic man. dear frank, i don't have all that much on my mind beyond imminent fatherhood and cbs's plans to steal woodward. and worrying about the new

raspberry plants i just put in. the final story i will tell about ben bradlee is a very famous story. it was told that his retirement roast when he left the paper. there was a reporter named tom lippmann. at one point, debbie reagan scuttled over to him and said, i have a question for you. he said, debbie, what is a? and he said dick had one word or two? [laughter] [laughter] [laughter] that gives you a sense of the color of who ben bradlee was. i said did you work hard on this letter or did you think about this and he said, a number of letters i wrote you could put in your ear.

ben does not mess around. it is obviously about more than the letters. the book is a lot more than the letters, although the letters are the heart of the book. the primary document that i came across in the course of this research and reporting are really the heart of the story. they tell the story of been ben in a way that is almost shockingly true to his public image. that is one of the most interesting things i have discovered. this is a man who privately didn't pull any punches publicly. one of the most interesting things, and i start the proper chronology after the introduction, is a lot of what people would describe as his personal charisma and his way of being. in 1969, there was a psychiatrist who came to interview then. and they participated in something called the grand study. it was a longitudinal study of harvard students. over the course of this interview, which is 18 pages long, this guy falls in love

with ben. watch this process unfold and it is staggering. the 18 page typewritten report concludes, i left the feeling that i have greater capacity of a human being just from having known him. and then he penciled in by hand, the psychiatrist did, and allusion, yes, but a personality trait that another's. if you want to know the heart of ben bradlee, that's it. that is it. he made people feel that they had a capability to go out and get it and he inspired the whole newsroom to do that. ultimately, that's the first thing in the book in the proper chronology. that's what you need to know. it is about more than charisma come as you can imagine. one of the first historical episodes i include in the book is the pentagon papers. the reason that is so is because captain graham, everyone will to you, watergate is not possible

that the pentagon papers. there was a moment prior to the pentagon papers where ben had decided to publish something that you graham didn't think he should publish. it was an important table setting moment for what unfolded the pentagon papers. he wrote her in 1968. it is a memo no one else has seen. this is one of the gems i came across. he told her he wanted to tell her why she had published this report one day in advance of its publication and she said i don't think it is further shattering news, but this is why wanted to do it. it is our duty to publish news when it is news and that's when we learned and when we have secured the information legally. a newspaper that yields any one of these pressures takes a sure step, perceptible, however small come out of the newspaper business. of course, no one of these steps

would put us out of business, that's not the issue. each subset yields the independence we cherish to someone else. often in this town, to a president or his representatives. a newspaper that yields any one of these pressures sacrifices one of its most precious assets. the vitality and commitment and the respect of its reporters. if only one man says what is the use of getting the news first if we don't print it, we lose something vitally important. unless our reasons are black and white. that is a pretty gangster's statement. everyone says what's the moment in watergate? this is the moment. the pentagon papers. daniel ellsberg, the guy who's leaking the papers, he went and got them. they arrived at 1030 in the morning on thursday. they basically decided to put up a story that day.

over the course of the day, and they hashed it out and they had lawyers, they had the whole 9 yards. the day ended with a call from kay graham. then nk are having this argument. kay graham says go ahead. in that moment, they would both say later, that is when "washington post" was born. ben bradlee came to the post in 1965. he had been in newsweek previously. he came to dc largely because he fell in love with a woman. in 1961 he became the bureau chief of newsweek magazine. after phil gramm, kay graham's husband died, she heard that bradley might be leaving or thinking of leaving. she wanted to keep him, so she had them out to lunch. she said she would give her left arm to have them at the paper.

the first thing he wanted to do was remove the agendas from the post's reporting. he wrote a memo to a reporter. i have to read it and sends word because it's so much better than mine. he wrote a memo to a former correspondent. in it he laid out what he was trying to do. >> we're not trying to make this paper platter. we're trying to make it fairer. what you interpret as an effort to remove flavor and individuality and allusion is an effort to remove the veiled stand, the editorial phrases that make your position clear while they cloud the news. the "washington post" and the loser. we want player, audacity and a flashing quality. you have those qualities. they are valued. we are talking about something entirely different. individuality at well-being above all. prayer.

that was ben's mission when he came in 1965. after he became editor in 1968, most of you read the "washington post", and you are accustomed to the style section. it was ben's idea. he thought it up. basically out of nothing. he put a team of people out of it and in january of 1969, the first style section came out. it is something that we as modern newspaper readers are accustomed to. there is a lifestyle action in every newspaper. but don graham will tell you dislike anyone else, -- asked him about the style section. he said to me, i think that might be my greatest legacy. watergate, the pentagon papers, and he said from a journalistic

perspective, i think it was the style section. sally quinn and all of these great writers came. that was then ben's position. it was a worry unshed very important part of the newspaper. one thing that happened just the day before the style section ran, it sets up everything later, is len downie, who would replace ben bradlee in 1991, he was doing a series on savings and loans practices. he found some crazy stuff. then had a meeting in his office with all the savings and loans guys who were placing ads. he walked over to downie's desk after this meeting and he said well, these guys were just in my office a while ago and they say they are recognizing all the advertising in this town.

he said i think my heart stopped. i just didn't know what to say. i was worried about what ben bradlee was going to say next. there was a long pause. he put his hand on my shoulder and said, just get it right, kid. i never heard another word about it. imagine a conversation today. really and truly, just imagine. we talked about the excerpt in new york magazine. i just want to read one about ben's view on all of this. when the post won the pulitzer for the watergate coverage, two people were very upset that the post had one and not paper there were porting. ben bradlee was on the board of

journalism at the time. there was some suspicion at the time. bob carlisle went in and said he got screwed. ben's version of that meeting is this. i said to them, and the last analysis, if it had not been for the guts of the grahams, you guys would be pumping gas somewhere. [laughter] [laughter] this is a colorful man. it got to the grahams. everybody talked about the guts of ben bradlee. he has huge guts. you meet him for one second and you feel it. but the guts of kay graham is a totally different thing. it is something i tried to explain this book. i did my best. i think don graham and a small endless hilton who are all the people around. they are all-around kay graham's estate and legacy. they give me a wonderful box of

case correspondence. it is one of the most exciting things that you can read. it was in real-time, back-and-forth. the pentagon papers was a very indicative moment. i tried to find some way to some of their relationship in the book. they go back and forth and people are expecting that kay graham was in love with ben bradlee. ultimately, that's not the case, and it was their contract and it worked. in 1995, kay threw him a book party when his memoir came out, a good life. it will make you see how much i had to leave out any 472 page book. at the end of the party, he realized that he hadn't given ka book yet. kay graham, his boss, the woman who paid him and maybe we'll wealthy man out of him. he wrote her a note and he wrote this. catherine, you have been the most important force in my life.

you have been a joyous partner who makes my heart weep every time i see you. there's nothing i can change that. not even my own momentary selfishness. the party with such a generous gesture. your words were so graceful and welcome. we everything about you comes across to me. love, then. i think that is a wonderful foundation and dissemination of who they were and who they are. i do want to talk about one thing. no one has brought this up so far. the janet cooke story. i don't know how many are familiar with that or remember it, but to give you a background, in 1980 a woman named janet cooke came to the "washington post" and she was a young black woman. they put her on the stories about the poppy.

her editor center out to find news about heroine and drugs. she heard a tantalizing bit of information but said there was an 8-year-old addict that had come to a place for treatment. one of the editors said that's a front-page story. you can get that, that's a front-page story. in a moment, jenna decides, okay, i'm going to get it. she couldn't find a boy. she can find a boy or any boy that matched the description. ultimately, she decided to make it up. she wrote a piece that is very vivid and full of impressionistic details. some people didn't buy right away. but it survived the editorial process at the post and it was published september 28, 1980. it was called jimmy's world.

she created a whole identity for him, that was actually not true. it ran on the front page, and immediately, the dc government said we are looking for the kid, and they said this is made up, and then the editorial chain of the post stood by the story. there was an enormous amount of scrutiny and they stood by the story. and it would likely have never been discovered that she had made it up had she not won the pulitzer prize in april of the following year. there are a host of ironies which would take too long to explain. one of them is she won the feature writing pulitzer prize. that category has been created two years earlier by benjamin bradlee. had he not created it, and never would have come down on his head. it is one of these strange things about the way that whole story unfolded. in mid april, she went and got the pulitzer, the post reprinted her story with a beautiful claimer shot of her. the next day, ben bradlee and

howard simons, they are both saying the same thing, which is the biography that janet cooke gave us for her pulitzer package doesn't match the bioon file. then you write them. don graham knew at the same thing. it took janet a couple of days. about 36 hours or so. what happened next is the reason i'm telling you the story. a massive fraud have been perpetrated on the "washington post." and on the post's public. what do you do? what you do? if you are ben bradlee. ben had been part of what kay graham was pushing, something we are all familiar with now.

he said everybody at the paper is going to cooperate with this inquiry. there's not going to be one sordid facts about this falsehood that we are not going to get first. when people asked him about that at the time, and when i asked him about it, what he says he learned a lesson at watergate. the lesson of watergate is that it is not always a crime that gets you in that much trouble. it's what you do after. what then did afterwards, with john grahams complete participation, he wrote a piece for the sunday paper after they had found out. it is one of the most stunning pieces of journalism you will ever come across i relied on it very heavily. at that moment when ben said were not going to cover this up, were going to get it ourselves,

that saved him and the "washington post." at least for a time. one of my favorite letters, and then i will get onto taking your questions in just a moment, is this kid at yell. i had to get permission to use any letters in the book. for that first letter, i had to call williams daughter, debbie hecht, and she called me from colorado and i said look, i want to use your death letter in the book. and i said there are some really great letters with colorful language. she said that's my dad. i reached him wherever he lives, and he had no memory of having written the letter. so he said you can use it, but you can't use my name. so i can't reveal his name. the sky was going to yale yell at one of ben's sons. there had been a media panel. and it was asked who makes

responsibility when someone makes mistakes? >> members of the audience remained uneasy with the answer because it remains unbelievable. america will not forget the pulitzer piece in the post. it will be remembered as media gate. i hope you will remember this for a long time who keeps the press honest. very true. this is ben's response. my, god, you have gotten pompous at an early age. you are paraphrased questions asks how often do we see the media admit to inaccurate reporting. you saw the "washington post" do it before anyone else. he saw the "washington post" do it on the front page. you saw the "washington post" apologized in an editorial. he saw the "washington post"

return the pulitzer prize unmasked. there was no other stuff i could have taken. i am speechless after injunction that i should remember this lesson and think of it longer. before you settle down as a stockbroker or whatever, enjoy the record club or whatever, try to think for yourself if i may give you a piece of advice. >> that is banned. i want to read to quotes too close, because i think they are important, particularly given what's been going on in my life in the last 10 days. they are a little long, and i hope you will humor me. one is from ben and one is from harry rosenfeld. ben gave a speech in april 1974 before nixon resigned but after the post had been fully vindicated. ben is very hesitant. you get the story today, it you

get another bike tomorrow, you never get a full life. the truth emerges. that's one of his main catchphrases. this is an important statement from ben because he almost never seen anything like this. this was april 16, 1974, in atlanta, georgia. there many obstacles in philosophy and practice. we can only print what we think is the truth at the time. or what we are told is the truth at the time. writing in the words of philip graham, only the rough draft of history. we are legitimately legitimately subject to the second-guess. unique among manufactured products, the newspaper is completely different every 24 hours, and it can't be recalled. it is produced in an adversary environment where the goals of the reported inherently conflict with the goals of the reporter and the reader. it is this daily conflict that gives importance and meaning to the first amendment, to freedom of the press. without that freedom, there is no conflict.

without that conflict, there is no truth. in terms of the what some have said about the reporting, i think this really says it. it says it better than i can. this is harry rosenfeld. he was supervising the reporters for everyone working on the watergate story. he is played by jack warden in the movie. for those of you who remember the movie. i talk with him in september of last year. i was open with them that some of my reporting was going to be -- it doesn't challenge the facts of the reporting, but it was going to pose new questions about the narrative of watergate. this is what he said. we can talk about this endlessly. but the sunsets. watergate was a piece of gold. april the truth. it wasn't right and every last detail, it was right in more detail than any story i've ever dealt with. certainly, with that kind of tenor. it was solid. you can argue about this and that, but the truth -- the truth

was revealed at great odds that shook up the country and the exit to this day. the paradigm was set by our watergate investigation. everybody earned his stripes. everybody. the fact that they weren't perfect human beings, the fact that they didn't make perfect judgments every time, i don't think means anything. i think that is a very powerful statement. at last, my favorite letter of welcome and then i will take questions. this is a 1992. this is a section at the end of the book where i do raw data from the bradleys files. i assembled it to try to tell you more about ben and i hope it comes through. this is my favorite of all the letters, and i think it is advice to live by it for all of us. dear ed, don't second guess yourself and don't look back. i am quite sure that i would've made the decision you did.

it looked like a bright star. it wasn't. [bleep] them. [laughter] [laughter] [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> any questions? >> [inaudible question] in the upcoming issue, i will be hoping to reveal your book. i'm going to check with the editors about it. i'm going to be bringing up the new york magazine article magazine article and pointing at the very essential to things involved are not very relevant

anymore. only woodward would know if they were to or not. the copy of "the new york times" can be verified whether or not what we are told about the truth, and there is a one -- there are three alternatives involved. one of them is true, then he did not tell the truth. let's deal with something which is not watergate, but when i get started, you may wish it was. years and years ago, if kay graham had said meeting for dinner in a cardboard shack outside maryland for pizza, they'll would come. we had a situation two years ago where a granddaughter wanted to have [inaudible] >> long elongate. >> yes, long day. we were approached and said we were expected to pony up. i'm not going to go -- up to chevy chase or anything like

this, up to extend. that says it all in terms of the post power and influence compared to what it was 20 years ago and what it is now. >> sure. >> you have a question? >> do think it's possible that the post had seen more backbone in its approach to persons in power that would regain some of the influence that it had in kay graham's time? >> that is a hard question for me to answer come as you can imagine. it is such a different time. to me, the more interesting piece of that question is what happened in the wake of everything. it is a direct parallel to janet cook in many ways. there was no real investigation at the post. in ben bradlee stay, there would've been how did this happen, let's get to the bottom of it. that was the example. that didn't happen. i think that is a definition of a culture shift. i think the post is -- you know, trying to figure out how to make it in the new world. i don't know that i have the

prescription for how they should succeed, but i do think the response is different in my mind and how the newspaper would've responded. anyone else? >> that was easy. not that particular question, of course, but it lack of questions >> [inaudible question] >> sure, what would you like to know? >> [inaudible question] >> i've been asked that question. he asked, to what extent did i see the controversy coming and what do i think of the reactions? did i see this precise

controversy coming in its scope and dimension? no, i did not. as i reported in the book, it was clear that bob didn't want me to report some of what i reported. but i had given him that stuff 14 months ago, so i had thought maybe it wouldn't play out the way did it did this week. i think from my perspective, it me. politico, knowing me in all this, i'm not accustomed to that. from a personal perspective it has been strange. i'm not going to say i'm completely surprised. the size of it has -- it was not something i expected, i guess. >> quick smack. >> i really can't come in to be honest with you. i woke up on monday morning, and there was a story in the post.

later in the day i was compared to nixon, to be on us. [laughter] [laughter] nobody has challenged a single fact of my reporting come and i stand by 100%. if anything, this controversy, if you want to call it that come has made me feel better about what i reported in my book, to be quite frank. >> would you mind stepping to the microphone, just so they can hear you? >> i was a bit surprised that ben bradlee sold the start section of the newspaper. it was very important. i was thinking perhaps that it

is like taking the post of people in the city. >> that is exactly how he described it when he set it up. >> also, it is like a nirvana away from politics. i want to hear your opinion about that. >> i think it is a really good question. absolutely. there were a lot of different reasons why the style section came to be. you never knew back in the day where the theater section was for the style section was, you had to look at the key to figure out where the review was. one of the key functions which is to consolidate all of that stuff. that was the practical function. then they had a section called about women. it was lowercase. as ben always says, it was stories about general's wives therefore less.

i don't anyone would say that ben is an enormous crusader for feminism, or anything like that, but in his rationale, one of the things he thought was we always cover women as women. he wanted a section that involve women, talked about women, but in a modern way. that was another component. the third thing he mentioned is really good. in the proposal for the section, the guy who submitted it, david leventhal, who is an assistant managing editor, he said we want it peace that is about the way people live. there was nothing like that in the newspaper. when they put it together, but first i'll section cover was of this -- a woman about an fbi suspect was wanted for kidnapping. this was a revolutionary story at the time. about a woman and by women. i think ben was really looking

for a modern way to express what was happening, and also for the newspaper to express their view of itself and have personality. as i say in the book, ben's great uncle was the first vendor of vanity fair. in that day, vanity fair had f. scott fitzgerald and all of these great writers. they were trying to become a modern magazine that expressed modern life. i think ben was doing the exact same thing with the style section. that is why it was so wonderful. >> did you talk to barry sussman in the book? >> i did not. i requested an interview, and i spoke to him two weeks ago. >> we are losing track of time because it's been such a whirlwind. i spoke to